Salon.com > Honeybeeshttp://www.salon.com
Tue, 03 Mar 2015 23:55:52 +0000enhourly1Scientists may have pinpointed what’s killing the bees: Yep, it’s the pesticideshttp://www.salon.com/2014/05/21/scientists_may_have_pinpointed_whats_killing_the_bees_yep_its_the_pesticides/
http://www.salon.com/2014/05/21/scientists_may_have_pinpointed_whats_killing_the_bees_yep_its_the_pesticides/#commentsWed, 21 May 2014 21:40:00 +0000Lindsay Abramshttp://www.salon.com/?p=13681077In his heartbreaking discussion with Salon about the sad, doomed plight of the world's bees, bumblebee expert David Goulson laid out the three main suspected causes of recent die-offs: habitat loss, disease and a specific class of pesticides known as neonicotinoid. That third one's the most controversial and, to the increasing frustration of many, one that the U.S. has yet to address. It's also, according to a recent study from Harvard, the key factor causing colony collapse disorder, or CCD.

]]>http://www.salon.com/2014/05/21/scientists_may_have_pinpointed_whats_killing_the_bees_yep_its_the_pesticides/feed/21How to save the world’s bees before it’s too latehttp://www.salon.com/2014/05/17/how_to_save_the_worlds_bees_before_its_too_late/
http://www.salon.com/2014/05/17/how_to_save_the_worlds_bees_before_its_too_late/#commentsSat, 17 May 2014 18:00:00 +0000Lindsay Abramshttp://www.salon.com/?p=13670330The European Commission knows how important bees are: In 2011, it passed a two-year moratorium on a class of pesticides thought to be facilitating the decline of global bee populations. The chemicals, scientific studies suggested, could be contributing to colony collapse disorder, or CCD, the acronym that's come to define the frightening and mysterious disappearance, seemingly overnight, of entire hives. Over the past six years, the U.S. has lost about $2 billion in such hives and, as a result, $30 billion in crops, to CCD.

The controversial move, of course, isn't enough to save the bees, but it's a start. The U.S., despite acknowledging a “complex set of stressors and pathogens,” including agrochemicals, as potential culprits in the die-offs, has yet do anything. In March 2013, a group of beekeepers and environmental groups sued the EPA for its failure to protect the insects, and, by extension, our food supply. The agency, however, said it won't complete its review of the pesticides until 2018.

]]>http://www.salon.com/2014/05/17/how_to_save_the_worlds_bees_before_its_too_late/feed/28Elderly woman unaware she was sharing her home with 20,000 beeshttp://www.salon.com/2013/10/14/elderly_woman_unaware_she_was_sharing_her_home_with_20000_bees/
http://www.salon.com/2013/10/14/elderly_woman_unaware_she_was_sharing_her_home_with_20000_bees/#commentsMon, 14 Oct 2013 20:19:00 +0000Lindsay Abramshttp://www.salon.com/?p=13506798A team of Florida wildlife trappers called in to deal with a rodent problem in a 98-year-old woman's attic found, in addition to a sizable number of rats and squirrels, between 20,000 and 30,000 bees.

The honeybee colony had been living in the Cocoa Beach home for about a year, one of the trappers told NBC News, adding, "It's pretty mind-boggling not to notice that you have a beehive of that size upstairs." Sevia Moore, the house's sole human occupant, told an NBC affiliate the bees didn't bother her.

In places where they aren't taking over people's homes, there's great concern over the falling population of honeybees. The trappers used a vacuum to suck the insects up and relocate them to a safer location.

]]>http://www.salon.com/2013/10/14/elderly_woman_unaware_she_was_sharing_her_home_with_20000_bees/feed/4Blame diesel fumes for honeybee colony collapsehttp://www.salon.com/2013/10/06/diesel_fumes_to_blame_for_honeybee_colony_collapse_partner/
http://www.salon.com/2013/10/06/diesel_fumes_to_blame_for_honeybee_colony_collapse_partner/#commentsSun, 06 Oct 2013 19:30:00 +0000edicksonhttp://www.salon.com/?p=13497613The importance of bees in our food system often goes unappreciated. Just by going about their daily business, these insects are responsible for pollinating three-quarters of the 100 crop species that provide roughly 90 percent of the global food supply. The most recent estimate for the economic value of this bee activity is that it’s worth over $200 billion.

But in recent years, an alarming number of bee colonies across North America and Europe have begun to collapse. As part of the phenomenon, formally known as Colony Collapse Disorder, worker bees fail to return to the hive after their pollen-collecting trips nearby. We still don’t fully understand what’s driving this trend, but the list of culprits likely includes pesticides, viral infections, intensive agriculture and perhaps even the practice of feeding bees high fructose corn syrup in place of the honey we take from them.

]]>http://www.salon.com/2013/10/06/diesel_fumes_to_blame_for_honeybee_colony_collapse_partner/feed/16The inside of a beehive, live-streamedhttp://www.salon.com/2013/08/14/bee_cam/
http://www.salon.com/2013/08/14/bee_cam/#commentsWed, 14 Aug 2013 16:08:00 +0000Lindsay Abramshttp://www.salon.com/?p=13447264Big-picture, the disappearance of the honeybee will mean catastrophe for the global food system and economy. On a much smaller scale, it will mean the loss of a uniquely fascinating insect.

Explore.org has launched a live honeybee cam that uses infrared to let viewers look inside a surviving hive. In the past six years, 10 million others like it have been wiped out by Colony Collapse Disorder. This star-turned colony has settled inside a hollow log in small-town Germany, and are busy rebuilding after their honeycomb collapsed:

]]>http://www.salon.com/2013/08/14/bee_cam/feed/2“Bee-friendly” plants may be contaminated with pesticideshttp://www.salon.com/2013/08/13/bee_friendly_plants_may_be_contaminated_with_pesticides/
http://www.salon.com/2013/08/13/bee_friendly_plants_may_be_contaminated_with_pesticides/#commentsTue, 13 Aug 2013 15:32:00 +0000Lindsay Abramshttp://www.salon.com/?p=13447240It isn't entirely clear why much of the world's bee population is rapidly disappearing, but the introduction in the mid-1990s of a class of pesticides known to target the insects' nervous systems is widely believed to be, at the very least, a contributing factor.

The pesticides are so prevalent, Discovery News reports, that even small efforts to help the bees may be inadvertently harming them. According to findings released today by Friends of the Earth, many of the plants sold to consumers interested in planting "bee-friendly" gardens are in fact contaminated with neonicotinoids:

In a pilot study conducted on FoE’s behalf, scientists from the Pesticide Research Institute examined flowering plants such as Salvia and Gaillardia, as well as pollinator-friendly fruits and vegetables such as tomato and squash, purchased from home improvement stores in the San Francisco Bay, Minneapolis/St. Paul, and Washington DC metropolitan areas. They found that of 13 composite samples (from 45 individual plants), seven tested positive for at least one neonicotinoid, with two testing positive for two residues, and a Gaillardia plant from Minnesota showing measurable levels of three different neonicotinoids.

]]>http://www.salon.com/2013/08/13/bee_friendly_plants_may_be_contaminated_with_pesticides/feed/6This could be the end of the honeybeehttp://www.salon.com/2013/08/08/this_could_be_the_end_of_the_honeybee/
http://www.salon.com/2013/08/08/this_could_be_the_end_of_the_honeybee/#commentsThu, 08 Aug 2013 18:41:00 +0000Lindsay Abramshttp://www.salon.com/?p=13433889This past winter, about a third of the U.S.'s honeybee colonies either disappeared or, just as mysteriously, died. The question of why colony collapse disorder (CCD) is occuring is a fascinating one, and Bryan Walsh takes a closer look at some of the possible explanations in Time's latest cover story. Each potential culprit he identifies--pesticides, tiny mites, the replacement of wild forage with monocultures, or what critics call "PPD" (piss-poor beekeeping)--doesn't seem able to fully accounts for the bees' disappearance. And the potential solutions he puts forward seem far-fetched, requiring either an extreme feat of technical engineering (Harvard is currently experimenting with "robobees") or a major paradigm shift, like completely banning the large class of pesticides that might be responsible.

On that extremely pessimistic note, Walsh puts forward a vision of what a world without honeybees might look like. The good news is that the food system won't collapse. Self-pollinating plants like wheat and rice will be fine. But plants that rely on honeybee pollination, like lettuce, almonds, and a whole array of fruits, could become a lot harder to grow. Beekeepers, naturally, will be put out of business; if any bees remain, they'll be replaced by something akin to factory farms:

]]>http://www.salon.com/2013/08/08/this_could_be_the_end_of_the_honeybee/feed/14Bees to EPA: Where’s your sting?http://www.salon.com/2013/03/30/bees_to_epa_wheres_your_sting_partne/
http://www.salon.com/2013/03/30/bees_to_epa_wheres_your_sting_partne/#commentsSat, 30 Mar 2013 20:00:00 +0000ahalperinhttp://www.salon.com/?p=13256366The list of fruits, vegetables and field crops that rely on honeybees for pollination is truly astonishing: apples, avocados, carrots, cotton seed, peaches, pumpkins, strawberries, sunflowers … it goes on and on. There’s stuff on the list that I’m not fond of, like onions, and things I couldn’t live without, like peanuts (well, peanut butter, anyway). The same is surely true for you. So it should frighten us all to learn how badly honeybees fared last year, as a mysterious malady kept right on killing them.

]]>http://www.salon.com/2013/03/30/bees_to_epa_wheres_your_sting_partne/feed/7Without honeybees, we may cease to behttp://www.salon.com/2013/03/21/without_honeybees_we_may_cease_to_be/
http://www.salon.com/2013/03/21/without_honeybees_we_may_cease_to_be/#commentsThu, 21 Mar 2013 17:11:00 +0000Jacob Sugarmanhttp://www.salon.com/?p=13248073 If you like almonds, then 2013 brought some bad news. Each year, honeybees from across the country make the trek to California, which grows 80 percent of the world’s almonds, to pollinate the almond crop. But bees have been dying in unusually large numbers for several years now, and this year appears worse than most.

The problems we face if we don’t have healthy populations of pollinators, particularly honeybees, extend beyond almonds. Three fourths of the top crops grown in the world require animals – mostly insects – for pollination. Odds are that most of your favorite fruits, nuts and melons are pollinated by honeybees.

Across the pond, the European Union has made major strides in shedding light on the role of certain pesticides in honeybee deaths. In fact, the European Commission has proposed a two-year ban on these pesticides. Meanwhile, at home, beekeepers remain frustrated that the U.S. government is not as forward-thinking. And, for another year, the saga of bee deaths continues.

]]>http://www.salon.com/2013/03/21/without_honeybees_we_may_cease_to_be/feed/26Bees in desperate need of ZZZshttp://www.salon.com/2012/10/26/bees_in_desperate_need_of_zzzs/
http://www.salon.com/2012/10/26/bees_in_desperate_need_of_zzzs/#commentsFri, 26 Oct 2012 15:32:00 +0000Jacob Sugarmanhttp://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13053749 We're all familiar with the feeling—waking up from a restless night only to realize that this will be a very long, sleepy day. Recent research reveals that honeybees are also sensitive to sleep deprivation, and although a cup of coffee may give you a morning buzz, the bees aren't so lucky.

Neurobiologists at the Free University of Berlin have found that sleepy bees fail to remember lessons learned the day before, a finding that could help scientists discover the neural processes involved in sleep and memory formation. They present their research October 25 in the Journal of Experimental Biology.

"We started with the idea that we could look for a neural substrate of learning and memory in bees, since they have a wonderful memory, can be easily trained, and we know their brain well at the neuronal level," says study co-author Randolf Menzel.